“I took a little tour soon after this in company of some friends, with whom I had contracted an intimacy abroad, into Scotland and Ireland, they having a curiosity to see those countries, and we spent six or eight months on this expedition; and when I had landed them in France, I returned home, and found my good mother in a very indifferent state of health, but her Pamela arrived to a height of beauty and perfection which exceeded all my expectations.  I was so taken with her charms when I first saw her, which was in the garden, with a book in her hand, just come out of a little summer-house, that I then thought of obliging her to go back again, in order to begin a parley with her:  but while I was resolving, she tript away with her curtesies and reverences, and was out of my sight before I could determine.

“I was resolved, however, not to be long without her; and Mrs. Jewkes having been recommended to me a little before, by a brother-rake, as a woman of tried fidelity, I asked her if she would be faithful, if I had occasion to commit a pretty girl to her care?

“She hoped, she said, it would be with the lady’s own consent, and she should make no scruple in obeying me.

“So I thought I would way-lay the girl, and carry her first to a little village in Northamptonshire, to an acquaintance of Mrs. Jewkes’s.  And when I had brought her to be easy and pacified a little, I designed that Jewkes should attend her to Lincolnshire:  for I knew there was no coming at her here, under my mother’s wing, by her own consent, and that to offer terms to her, would be to blow up my project all at once.  Besides, I was sensible, that Mrs. Jervis would stand in the way of my proceedings as well as my mother.

“The method I had contrived was quite easy, as I imagined, and such as could not have failed to answer my purpose, as to carrying her off; and I doubted not of making her well satisfied in her good fortune very quickly; for, having a notion of her affectionate duty to her parents, I was not displeased that I could make the terms very easy and happy to them all.

“What most stood in my way, was my mother’s fondness for her:  but supposing I had got her favourite in my hands, which appeared to me, as I said, a task very easy to be conquered, I had actually formed a letter for her to transcribe, acknowledging a love-affair, and laying her withdrawing herself so privately, to an implicit obedience to her husband’s commands, to whom she was married that morning, and who, being a young gentleman of genteel family, and dependent on his friends, was desirous of keeping it all a profound secret; and begging, on that account, her lady not to divulge it, so much as to Mrs. Jervis.

“And to prepare for this, and make her escape the more probable, when matters were ripe for my plot, I came in one night, and examined all the servants, and Mrs. Jervis, the latter in my mother’s hearing, about a genteel young man, whom I pretended to find with a pillion on the horse he rode upon, waiting about the back door of the garden, for somebody to come to him; and who rode off, when I came up to the door, as fast as he could.  Nobody knew any thing of the matter, and they were much surprised at what I told them:  but I begged Pamela might be watched, and that no one would say any thing to her about it.